Southern Discomfort by Margaret Maron

they looked heavier than they were. Or maybe that was because many hands really do make light work. I was afraid we'd need sky hooks to hoist those cumber-some things up to the women perched like acrobats on those flimsy-looking skeletal walls. Up they went, though, and once they were nailed in place, the whole structure suddenly became rigid and sturdy. A steady stream of half-inch plywood sheets followed; and as soon as the bottom courses were secured, several of us swarmed onto the roof to tack down black tar paper.
    "Now let it rain!" we told one another.
    As we knocked off in the late afternoon, BeeBee Powell stood under the waterproof roof with a blissed-out smile on her face.
    "Starting to look like a real house, isn't it?" I said.
    "Starting to look like home," she answered softly.
    Her children were darting in and out between the open studs. "Which is my room, Mama?" they called. "Which is mine?"
    Annie Sue approached with the wiring diagram in one hand and a carpenter's pencil in the other. "We don't have to put everything exactly where it is on this, BeeBee. Did you think about where you'd like counter sockets in the kitchen? And what'd you decide about that ceiling light in Kaneesha's room?"
    As they went off together to mark off on wall studs and ceiling joists where each socket and light fixture should go, I grabbed a basket and started picking up scraps to carry out to the dumpster.
    Most of the women had gone, scattered for the week with promises to come back or send friends in their places next weekend. Still there were Annie Sue's friends who were straightening lumber in the back and Lu Bingham and Betty Ann Edgerton, who sat on the edge of the small front porch and conferred about delivery schedules for next Saturday's supplies. They were hoping to set the doors and windows and get the exterior sheathing on so that the whole house would be dried in, ready for insulation and Sheetrock.
    I had emptied two basketfuls of trash when Betty Ann called, "Come and sit a minute."
    "I'm afraid my muscles will seize up if I stop moving," I said, but I didn't need to be asked twice.
    Out in the side yard, Cindy McGee and Paige Byrd had stepped into a water fight with the Powell kids. Squeals of laughter erupted every time the hose changed hands.
    "Where do they get the energy?" Betty Ann groaned as she pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her nail apron and lit up.
    "Probably comes with being sixteen," I said.
    "Were we ever sixteen?" Lu took out her own cigarettes and offered me one.
    I shook my head.
    "We
were
sixteen," Lu said. "Because that's when you and I both started smoking. I remember sneaking out of study hall with you to the girls' bathroom. When did you quit?"
    "When I was eighteen," I reminded her. "When my mother was dying with cancer."
    It was part of yet another secret bargain I had tried to strike with God that summer:
Just let her live and I swear I'll never put another cigarette to my lips.
    God wasn't bargaining that day either.
    "Oh, Lordy, that's right," said Betty Ann as Lu's hand hesitated on her lighter. "Will it bother you if we smoke?"
    "No," I said honestly.
    In truth, I had always loved the smell of mellow tobacco and still missed cigarettes after all these years. Yet even if it did bother me, it would be hypocritical to say so, since part of my income is from the tobacco allotment I inherited from Mother. Besides, some of my sweetest memories had the smell of her cigarettes and Daddy's twining through them.
    The sun headed down the western sky behind the tall pines but there was plenty of daylight left. I rested my tired back against a wall stud and waited for Annie Sue to finish up and carry me home. She and her two friends had talked about meeting some guys at a dance over at the Armory, but Aunt Zell and Uncle Ashe's Jacuzzi was the only entertainment I wanted tonight.
    Marking on the studs as she talked, Annie Sue and BeeBee came down the newly defined hall into what would be the